


i'm so sorry that you have to have a body

by Princex_N



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Chronic Illness, Cripplepunk, Family Drama, Gen, Pararibulitis (Dirk Gently), Pre-Canon, Self-Destruction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:55:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26423737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: Pararibulitis is less of a hammer smashing apart Todd's life and more of a slow growth gradually taking apart the foundations.Or, Todd is still lying, but not in the same way he was in canon.
Relationships: Amanda Brotzman & Todd Brotzman
Comments: 7
Kudos: 48





	i'm so sorry that you have to have a body

**Author's Note:**

> Cpunk!Todd, let's rock and roll! Considered making this story about Amanda but i don't have much experience with being homebound (quarantine aside) and didnt know if id do a good job with it. i relate more to todd's exhausted spite also, so,,, AU time.
> 
> title from [AJJ's body terror song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti8YPQF6hlM)

Todd is twenty-one when he gets his first attack, midway through his junior year of college, and part of him just wants to pretend like it's not that big of a deal. 

Sure, yes, okay, he _did_ just collapse in his dorm room because of the debilitating pain of having his skin slough off his body, but look. 

He has a calc exam in the morning, and that's kind of a big deal. 

He forcibly chalks the whole thing up to stress and sleep deprivation and resolves not to think about it. 

At least until the beer he's drinking at a party that Friday night turns to acid in his throat. 

Then he nearly chokes to death on a stranger's carpet and doesn't really have a choice but to acknowledge that this is a thing that's happening to him and it isn't likely to just go away on its own. 

Once he can finally breathe without choking on the thick sensation of bloody foam in his mouth, he gets back up off the floor, reassures everyone that's crowded dumbly around him that Yes, he's fine and No, they don't need to call 911 and ruin the party, and then Todd drives himself home and calls his parents. 

His mother cries and his dad promises to shift some money into Todd's bank account so that he can make it to see a proper doctor and get his first prescription picked up without a hitch. They ask him if he wants to come home, and Todd tells them no. He at least once to finish up this semester, and he doesn't want to strangle the Mexican Funeral just as it's starting to really kick off. 

He has the medication. He'll be fine. 

And he is, at first. Pararibulitis is less of a hammer smashing apart Todd's life and more of a slow growth gradually taking apart the foundations. The attacks aren't excessively frequent, but they're exhausting. Time he used to spend studying gets reallocated to napping so that he'll have enough energy to go to class, or work, or band practice. He starts to fall behind on his homework, and his test grades start to follow soon after. 

Going to the accommodations office is an uncomfortable ordeal, but Todd makes himself do it. The woman at her desk takes the paperwork from his doctors and asks what would help with his classes, and Todd is so baffled by the question that it takes him an uncomfortably long time to find an answer for her.

Todd just kind of lives like this. How is he supposed to know what to do about any of it? 

In the end, he manages a couple of stumbling suggestions that she dutifully takes down. It could have been worse, overall, but also none of it matters because Todd can't actually bring himself to forward the email he receives to any of his professors. 

It's fine. Todd's smart enough to work something out on his own, he doesn't need to go through the trouble of inviting more attention onto himself. 

He has an attack in the middle of helping a customer one day and gets fired for it. Todd is almost positive that's not supposed to be valid ground for letting an employee go, but he can't bring himself to argue the point and it's not like he could afford a lawyer or something anyway. His parents are still sending enough money that Todd doesn't have to _stress_ about it, and maybe this will leave him with enough energy to catch up with his schoolwork too. 

His parents call every other week to check in, and Todd assures them that he's doing just fine. Mentions just enough of his attacks to make it seem like he's handling things perfectly, and definitely doesn't mention having to bail during an exam before he could even get through a quarter of the questions. 

His mom tells him that she's so proud of him for handling this all so well. Todd tells her it's not such a big deal, and tries not to look guiltily at the shit grades he's currently maintaining. 

After his job, Todd's social life is the next thing to go. He's never exactly had an enormous group of friends, but he did tend to go out more often than not. That all dissolves pretty quickly once he has to start spending time worrying if the vibration of the music will make his bones rattle apart or if the press of bodies in a crowded room will suffocate him. Not to mention that most of the time he's too tired or sore to really want to hang out in the first place. 

He saves his energy for band practice and class periods and reassures himself that this is fine. 

Most of the time these days people wouldn't want him at their parties anyway. Todd's gained a bit of a reputation around campus at this point, which is equal parts a blessing and a curse. On one hand, he has to spend less time fending off EMTs since most people know not to call an ambulance every time Todd breaks down screaming in the hallways now. On the other hand, it's a little hard to maintain tolerable relationships with people when you're known as the guy who keeps breaking down screaming in the hallways. 

There's a period of time where, between juggling his shitty grades and attendance rates and band practices and performances, Todd makes a decent effort to hide everything. As if presenting himself as perfectly normal will change reality to make it all true. 

Instead all it does is make him anxious and paranoid, constantly on high alert for any sign of a potential trigger or attack, and the stress doesn't do him any fucking favors in that department at all. People still whisper about him, still stare as he picks himself up off the floor, still glare at him for disrupting quiet hours or class periods. 

So, what the hell is the point? 

Todd buys a medical bracelet and makes sure to wear it every time he goes out. Keeps an emergency dose of his rescue medication in a small pill container around his neck so he doesn't have to fumble in his pockets or struggle with the childproof lids for it. Slaps a patch on his jacket that says AS LONG AS I'M SCREAMING I'M FINE and a tag on his backpack requesting that people don't touch him and only call 911 if he's choking or not breathing. It doesn't exactly make him anymore popular, but it makes Todd's life a hell of a lot smoother, so who gives a shit? 

The answer to _that_ is Todd's band. Things have been tense ever since Todd first brought up his diagnosis, and Todd is slowly growing to hate every second of it. Too much time is wasted arguing about whether or not Todd can handle the noise of practice (somehow, no one seems willing to take him at his word, despite the fact that it's _his_ body, and he's the one who would know). Practices get rescheduled almost constantly, which Todd later finds out is just an excuse they came up with to practice without him being there, despite the fact that the band was his idea in the first place. 

Despite all the shit they keep piling on him, Todd still dedicates most of his energy to the band. Tells himself that if they really take off like it seems like they mind, then it'll be okay if college falls to the wayside a bit. It's too late to drop his classes without tanking his GPA, but Todd is also pretty sure that it's too late to really salvage that either, so he sticks with it and goes to class when he can, but also doesn't push himself too far. 

Things are going to work out, and it'll all be fine. 

At least until Todd has an attack in the middle of a performance. 

They're playing in a shitty bar, which is a little less than impressive, but _supposedly_ there's an agent in the crowd, and _that_ is a big deal. 

Maybe it's the excitement or the stress, or the fact that Todd slept like shit the night before, or the shitty reverb of the building, or maybe it's nothing at all except for Todd's bullshit luck, but they don't even make it through half of their set before Todd gets electrocuted by his own guitar and nearly seizes off the fucking stage. 

They don't get any offers or invited to have any conversations. The next day, Todd gets a text informing him that the band has decided it might be for the best if he isn't involved in any performances from here on out. 

Todd is both the front man and the person who built the name and band, so he's a little less than fucking pleased about this development. 

His grades are in the tank, he doesn't have a job, his remaining friends have just kicked him out of his own band, and he'll be damned if they're just going to take the name and move on without him. 

So, Todd takes most of the band's equipment (most of which he - or more specifically, perhaps, his _parents_ \- helped buy) and sells them to the first secondhand shop that will take them, reacts appropriately surprised when this is discovered, and then packs his clothes and his guitar and uses the money he got to fly back home. 

(When he lands, he turns his phone back on to find a barrage of angry voicemails, most of which Todd deletes without listening to, so he assumes they found all of the shit. He hopes that they had to pay to get it all back.) 

He doesn't mention his grades and his parents don't really ask. They tell him they're glad to see him, relieved to find him all in one piece, and awkwardly avoid looking at the patch on his jacket. 

Todd is used to this by now, so it's fine. 

Amanda is much less reserved. She laughs at the patch, dutifully reads the tag on his backpack, and tells him she likes his pill case. She's 13 now, and it's almost weird to see her again. Todd never _avoided_ going home, but visiting always did tend to be low on his list of priorities, and it's been a little over a year since he saw her last. He jokes that she's nearly as tall as he is, and she rolls her eyes and remarks that it's not like that's so much of a feat. 

He puts her in a headlock, and she laughs, and Todd almost wonders why he didn't come home sooner. 

(And then one afternoon he opens his eyes after spending god knows how long choking on water to see Amanda staring down at him, tear-stained and panicked, and Todd remembers _Oh, right_.) 

Overall, being home is nice. It turns out that when Todd is less stretched thin between too much shit that requires his energy and attention, he's less prone to unexpected attacks. Instead of having them nearly every other day (or every day, on the worst weeks) he gets one or two a week, occasionally with enough of a warning that he can excuse himself to somewhere quieter and less populated before it hits. It's nice to spend time with Amanda and their parents again, and that's just an added bonus. 

But ultimately, Todd has no fucking idea what he's supposed to do with himself now. He's a college dropout, his band imploded, and his ability to hold down a job (or get one in the first place) has decreased pretty significantly. There's no part of him that likes the idea of living with his parents for the rest of his life, but he has no idea what he's supposed to do otherwise. It's selfish, and probably stupid, but mostly he just tries not to think about it. 

In the meantime, he tries to figure out how to take care of himself the right way and determine exactly where his limits are. He tries all of the meditation and strange diets and vitamins his mother brings home, even though none of them really work, just because it'll make her happy. He does household chores while his family is out of the house, spends some time trying his hand at writing solos, and then keeps an eye on Amanda once she's home before their parents get back from work. 

It's not how he imagined his life at 22 looking like, but things could definitely be a lot worse. 

But things were always going to fall apart, and Todd doesn't know if it's the Pararibulitis or just _him_ that's to blame. 

His parents seem to swing back and forth between treating Todd like he’s already on his death bed and admonishing him for not doing more (whether ‘more’ is defined as being more social or having a job or going back to college depends on the argument). He starts getting frustrated by his mother’s new attempts to solving the problem, and the constant underlying implication that Todd is only sick because he’s not trying hard enough to get better. Amanda and their parents are arguing almost constantly now, for reasons Todd can never really follow along with, and the noise and stress of all that starts triggering Todd’s attacks, which gets them going all over again.

He and Amanda are doing fine, until they’re not. Todd teaches her how to play the drums (the basics, at least, but she quickly proves herself to be far better than Todd ever was) and they goof off in the garage together, and Todd isn’t embarrassed to call it _fun_. They get along great, up until Amanda asks him if he’ll take her and her friends to the mall up the road. 

Since Todd's only actual job is to more or less be Amanda's babysitter, he agrees. That's going well, with Todd mostly hanging back behind them and occasionally answering a question tossed his way or throwing in a joke or comment here and there. Up until the girls head into some store packed with soaps and candles, where the smell is so overwhelming it makes Todd's head spin. 

He knows he should probably just avoid it, that Amanda would understand if he wanted to wait outside or got them to skip it altogether, but Todd doesn't want to ruin the fun or be responsible for losing some stranger's kid that he's supposed to be watching, so he makes himself head in anyway, breathing thinly through his mouth (and occasionally through his shirt sleeve when he can get away with it). 

He very nearly makes it out unscathed, but someone's toddler knocks a candle off the display and breaks out into shrieks at the shattering of glass, and Todd winds up sprinting out of the store, moaning thinly around the sensation of glass buried beneath his skin, and vomits into a trashcan in the hall, stomach turned by the smells and sounds and pain. 

Amanda and her friends are a few yards away when Todd finally manages to swallow his meds without puking them back up. Amanda hands him his phone that he'd dropped when he ran out and doesn't quite meet his eyes when she asks if they can head home. 

Wrung out and strangled by a shame and embarrassment Todd hasn't let himself feel in a while, he doesn't protest and doesn't say anything when Amanda starts joking about it with her friends in the car. He still remembers how scared he was the first time he saw his aunt have an attack; if she wants to turn it into a joke instead, Todd's definitely not going to stop her (especially since he's usually the one joking about it in the first place, most of what she's saying is practically recycled from Todd's own material, and he _definitely_ isn't going to admit that he can't take what he himself dishes out, especially when it's coming out of the mouth of a 13 year old.) 

Amanda doesn’t stop hanging out with him all together, but she never asks him to take her anywhere anymore, and usually skips out on any excursion their parents invite them on. She teases while they jam together in the garage, and Todd tells himself that he’s definitely not letting it get to him.

His little sister is not going to succeed at what Todd’s peers failed to do, especially when she’s not really even trying to hurt him in the first place.

But things aren’t as smooth as they were, and Todd can’t shake the fear that he scares Amanda or embarrasses her, and he’s admittedly getting more and more stifled living in the same house as his parents, so the next time they bring up the potential of Todd moving into his own place again, Todd agrees without putting up a fight.

They find him a nice place about 20 minutes away, and Todd tries not to feel weird about them paying his rent, and then finally applies for disability benefits.

Time passes like that for a while. Todd gets enough money to pay his rent and bills and most of his necessities, and the money his parents still give him covers the rest. They all get along a bit better when they’re not constantly around each other, and Todd starts looking into low-stress ways of earning money here and there, at least to help stave off the boredom.

And then Todd is 26 and getting a frantic phone call from his 17-year-old sister who’s terrified out of her mind by the barbed wire wrapping around her wrists and forearms ( _thank god not around her neck, thank fucking god,_ Todd thinks frantically as he sprints mindlessly out of his apartment, unwilling to hang up on her in order to call their parents).

The attack is over by the time Todd gets there, but he splits his medication with her and sits with her as he texts their parents to tell them what’s going on. Their dad comes home early to take Amanda to the hospital and their mom gets back from her meeting and takes one look at Todd before bursting into tears.

Pararibulitis runs in their family, but still relatively rarely. She had never gotten sick and had held out hope that she might not carry it, but still took precautions just in case one of her kids wound up with it. No one had ever prepared for both of them getting sick.

She doesn’t think she can afford to take care of both of them, they were already going to have to discuss whether they’d be able to keep supporting Todd.

He starts planning immediately. Tells her to stop sending him money and save it for Amanda, that he can manage just fine on the benefits and that his insurance can cover the cost of his medication (it won’t, actually, not completely, but his parents don’t need to know that). She protests, because of course she does, because Todd is sick and he shouldn’t be pushing himself and he’s perfectly capable, but is he really?

And Todd isn’t lying when he says that the attacks are rare, but he might be exaggerating. At the very least, he doesn’t say anything about the stress he’s been able to avoid being the reason for that, and if his mom assumes that it’s just happening normally, that Todd is getting better, well… That’s not a lie _he_ told, even if he doesn’t bother to correct her.

Especially not when Amanda catches wind of it, staring up at him and delighting in the idea that she might get better too.

It’s just a white lie, just for now. It’s not a big deal. That’s what Todd keeps reminding himself. A necessary evil. 

Then Amanda nearly drowns in the middle of one of her classes, winds up in the hospital for nearly 3 days, and subsequently becomes so anxious that she stops leaving the house entirely. Given the frequency of her milder attacks, and the severity of her worst one, their parents don’t protest, but they do come to Todd to ask questions, and Todd comes to a conclusion.

He spent way too long completely complacent in being taken care of, and now Amanda is going to suffer for it. She’s not going to be finished high school now – hasn’t even finished getting her driver’s license – and the only reason their parents aren’t going to be able to keep supporting her is because they wasted it all on Todd.

Their support is going to have a hard limit now, and Amanda can’t depend on it like she should be able to. So, Todd is going to have to pick up the slack and make sure that he’s there to take care of her instead.

He gets his doctor to prescribe a cheaper version of his medication (and yes, he tells her, he understands that it’ll likely be less effective) and spaces out his dosages as much as he can. The benefits are too limiting, so Todd starts applying for jobs again, despite the gap in his resume. He sells most of his belongings, keeping only the basic necessities and his guitar, and passes that money over to his parents, and moves into a much smaller and shittier apartment a little closer to home, deftly fielding any potential visits from his family.

He balances working part time at a couple of different jobs, picking up new ones whenever he gets fired for his inconsistent performance, and quitting others when he finally manages to maintain a full-time position. He tries not to wince as he loses benefits due to his new income, but it’s fine. He makes enough to still pay his bills and send some to his parents and put some aside for Amanda once she gets older. It means that his medication becomes sparer, and his diet gets bad in a way it hasn’t been since his freshman year of college, but it’s _fine_.

If he’d been smart and less of a self-absorbed jackass he might have planned more for this eventuality.

The downside of all of this – the biggest one, at least – is that Todd’s health nose dives. The attacks aren’t as frequent as Amanda’s are, but they’re devastating when they do hit. Thankfully they’re more common at the end of the day than in the middle, so Todd doesn’t get fired from his recently acquired full-time job as a bellboy, but far too often he gets home from work just to pass out on the floor after an attack until he wakes up with just enough time to make it back to work.

He’s lucky that Amanda is the center of his parents’ attention now, otherwise one of them might find out.

Todd isn’t really sure why he keeps lying, but he does. He doesn’t want to be an added stressor for his parents, doesn’t want any more of their money set aside for him, and doesn’t want anyone asking if he’s ‘sure’ that he’s able to take care of himself. He doesn’t want to be the one to extinguish Amanda’s last hope that she might be able to go back to how things were before this ever happened.

So, Todd makes sure to remove his medical bracelet before he goes home (it fits under the sleeves of his godawful bellboy uniform, so he keeps it on there, just in case), stops wearing the emergency dose around his neck, and makes sure to take the proper dose of his usual medication before he goes to visit. Maybe it isn’t sustainable, and maybe he’s going to get caught one day.

But that day hasn’t happened yet, and with any luck, it never will.

**Author's Note:**

> fun fact: i definitely initially thought that todd was lying about remission just to give amanda hope before the actual reveal happened later in the show lol
> 
> i wrote this thing last winter break and then just.. never posted it for some reason


End file.
